1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for making a pita chip or crisp and other such products in a continuous sheeting operation. Specifically, the process involves cutting a sheeted dough into longitudinal strips, cooking these longitudinal strips to form tubes, and pressing these tubes with a nub press prior to cutting and finish cooking.
2. Description of Related Art
Pita bread is a type of flatbread typically a round pocket bread, believed to have originated in the Middle East. The baking process typically involves forming, by rolling, a flat dough disk that is baked in a hot oven, usually in excess of 500° F., on a flat support surface. The “pocket” inside the finished loaf is created during cooking when the outside layers of the bread are seared, thus forming a cap that impedes the release of steam from the interior of the bread. This trapped steam puffs up the dough in the middle of the bread forming a pocket. As the bread cools and flattens, a pocket is left in the middle that can be later stuffed for making sandwiches and the like.
Pita “chips” or “crisps” (these two terms are used interchangeably herein) can be made by cutting or chopping pita bread loaves into chip sized pieces. Making individual round pita bread loaves and cutting each loaf into chip sized pieces can be time consuming and is not conducive to an efficient, continuous operation. One prior art approach to this issue involves pressing a dough ball between two hot plates to form the pita loaf and then cutting the loaf into smaller chip sizes. This approach is referred to as a dough ball press method followed by chopping of the bread loaves. The dough ball press method is not particularly efficient and has not demonstrated desirable throughput rates on continuous or semi-continuous product lines.
One attempt at developing a continuous process that makes pita chips or crisps more efficiently than the dough ball press method can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,291,002 entitled “Method for Preparing Elongated Pita Bread” issued on Sep. 18, 2001, to inventor George Goglanian (the “Goglanian Patent”). The Goglanian Patent describes a process whereby dough is sheeted and then cut longitudinally into continuous strips. These strips are run through an oven, thereby producing a tube-shaped bread product. A tube shape, however, is not conducive to making into a flat chip, because cutting the resultant tube would yield shorter tube segments as opposed to flat chips. Consequently, the Goglanian Patent teaches cutting this tube along its longitudinal edges into two sections, a top section and a bottom section. When these sections are cut into chip shapes, the sections fall away from each other, thus making chips of both the top and the bottom of the tube.
The process described in the Goglanian Patent produces a pita chip or crisp with only one side having the characteristic pita bread exterior texture. The other side of the chip comprises the interior of the cooked tube and, therefore, presents a different texture than the outside surface. Further the Goglanian Patent requires the cutting step that separates the top half of the tube from the bottom half of the tube. This step requires special cutting equipment and leads to product loss during the cutting itself. While the Goglanian Patent can produce a chip from flatbread, it does not produce the pita chip similar to one made by chopping or cutting a round pita bread loaf.
Consequently, a need exists for a continuous pita chip process, along with the accompanying equipment, that can efficiently produce a pita chip having the exterior pita texture on both sides of the chip such that it resembles a pita chip made by cutting a traditional pita bread loaf. Such process should be capable of throughput rates typical of sheeter lines and, preferably, use equipment which provides for a minimal plant footprint.